One of a Kind
by Jade Hunter
Summary: After the events of X2, Wolverine thinks back on Lady Deathstrike.


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Title: One of a Kind

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Author: Jade Hunter

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Disclaimer: None of the characters in this fic belongs to me.

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A.N: Just thought it was sad about what happened to Yuriko Oyama, especially since she wasn't even controlling her own actions.

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Even after knowing that Stryker could somehow control mutants, with Nightcrawler and Magneto both attesting to it, he had never bothered to check before he leapt in.

Filled with rage against Stryker, wanting to kill the man, torture him for answers and barely listening to the words, Logan had been doubly enraged when he had been halted in his tracks by someone who was obviously on Stryker's side. He saw her as the enemy, and had reacted instinctively, unsheathing his claws.

To his shock, she also popped out her claws, five of them, one from each finger.

They fought, and he came to realize – the hard way – that she possessed healing powers similar to his as well, though she was giving his more of a workout than he was giving hers.

The heat of the battle and the agony of his wounds had taken him, swept him away into an all-too familiar battle frenzy, and only when it was too late, did he realized it.

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"I used to think you were one of a kind, Wolverine…I was wrong."

He had known Stryker was a sick bastard, but he hadn't known just how sick until that last moment.

Plunging the needle between her unbreakable ribs and into her heart, bleeding from multiple stab wounds that seemed to heal at an agonizingly slow rate, Logan had seen it.

Shuddering as the liquid adamantium, boiling hot, seeped into her, Yuriko Oyama's mouth had dropped open, her eyes had widened – and changed color.

From adamantium-silver to chocolate-brown.

Awareness entered her eyes briefly, before the red-hot pain and the cloak of approaching death completely overshadowed it.

It was then that he knew, that he realized what he had done.

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"I used to think you were one of a kind, Wolverine…I was wrong."

And he grieved and felt regret.

The soldiers at the mansion had deserved every wound he inflicted on them – they had been trying to harm the children, children who were innocent and had their entire lives ahead of them. Undoubtedly, he had killed more people, he could remember some of them, but they all had one thing in common: they were all bastards and either deserved it or started it.

Neither reason kept him up at night.

But he knew that her eyes would, because they were brown, not silver.

Lady Deathstrike, Yuriko Oyama, it didn't matter what she was called, what she might have called herself. All that mattered was that she had been used in a way that was far worse than what had been done to himself.

Not only had her skin been grafted with adamantium, as his was, her mind, her free will, was taken from her as well. Her body had been a weapon, used for purposes that would have destroyed her in the end, and – if the blue guy's word was right – she had seen every moment of it, helpless to act, to stop herself.

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"I used to think you were one of a kind, Wolverine…I was wrong."

They were so alike, it chilled him, to think that she could easily have been him, and vice versa. She could have escaped, without memories, to be sure, but now he knew that it had been the better of the two fates. He could have been oppressed by Stryker, used by him, all the while helpless to actually do anything.

Now knowing what he did, Logan wondered what would have happened if he'd known beforehand. Would he have tried to save her? Could he have?

He didn't know the answers to that, no one did, but he knew one thing.

Stryker had been wrong.

Logan had unknowingly, unthinkingly, killed the one person who might have understood him completely, who might have taken away some of his uniqueness. 

That fact hurt as much as the guilt.

Because now he truly was one of a kind.

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FIN.


End file.
